User blog:Cerne/Much ado about volcanoes
Yeah, I know, three entries in two days. Usually I wouldn't be so frequent with posting them but I have recently found more that I would like to type about and that will surely be useful for my conworld. I was reading Neil Comins' book again earlier today and I am now about...I would say, half-way through the fourth chapter. This chapter speculates about what the Earth would be like if it had a thicker crust, and that got me into thinking about my conworld's geology (again). In particular, since my conworld is so volcanic, what the consequences will be for all that volcanism. So I brought up Wikipedia and took a look at the article on volcanoes. That in turn led me to the article on volcanic gases. Yes, I know I typed in my previous Outdated Update entry that I wasn't going to use my blog as a reference anymore unless it was for something fictional. Well, this is going to be my personal reference. And maybe something I can link to whenever I want to elaborate on something I type elsewhere, like on an online community. Just don't take this article's word for anything. Use the Wikipedia articles it features and refers to, rather than the entry itself. That way, I don't get into crap about it whenever I screw up somewhere and someone does mistake the entry as an authoritative reference. I am only re-transmitting information here, not re-creating it (if that even means anything). OK, so what exactly did I see on Wikipedia? Here is the first article: Volcanic Gas. Below, I list all of the gases that the article says are produced by volcanoes. They are grouped by types of elements for single-element gases, then by compounds with the strongest or most dominant element in them. NON-METALS *H = Hydrogen *N = Nitrogen *O = Oxygen NOBLE GASES *He = Helium *Ne = Neon *Ar = Argon CARBON COMPOUNDS *CO = Carbon Monoxide *CO2 = Carbon Dioxide *COS = Carbonyl sulphide *CH4 = Methane *Various Halocarbons *Various other organic (Carbon-based) compounds *CH3Hg = Methylmercury NITROGEN COMPOUNDS *NO = Nitric oxide *NO2 = Nitrogen dioxide PEROXIDES *H2O = Water vapour SULPHUR COMPOUNDS *H2S = Hydrogen Sulphide (low temperature) *SO2 = Sulphur Dioxide (high temperature) *SF6 = Sulphur hexafluoride HALOGEN COMPOUNDS *HF = Hydrogen fluoride *HCl = Hydrogen chloride *HBr = Hydrogen bromide *Various Halogen oxide radicals NOTE: The Wikipedia aricle I listed merely mentions "Nitrogen oxide" but the only Notrogen oxide compounds that are typically released by volcanoes are NO and NO2 so those are the only ones I listed. See here for reference. ..... I read another article on Earth's atmosphere because I wanted to find out which of those volcanic gases constituted a major part of our atmosphere, which volcanic gases were no longer present, and which atmospheric constituents were not of volcanic origin. First, here is the article: Atmosphere of Earth. A couple of things before I go on: 1) when displaying the gases with numbers below the decimal, I rounded up to the highest number; and 2) I left in all of the decimal places for the lower numbers because I am not sure yet how to display super- or sub-text on Wikia and hence cannot represent numbers as exponents. If you wanted to, though, I assume you would multiply the first real number by ten to the negative power of how many decimal places there are. Or something like that. I am not a mathematics expert. #Nitrogen: 78% #Oxygen: 21% #Argon: 0.9% #Carbon dioxide: 0.04% #Neon: 0.002% #Helium: 0.0005% #Methane: 0.0002% #Krypton: 0.0001% #Hydrogen: 0.00006% #Nitrous oxide: 0.00003% #Carbon Monoxide: 0.00001% #Xenon: 0.000009% #Ozone: 0.000007% max #Nitrogen dioxide: 0.000002% #Iodine: 0.000001% #Ammonia: Trace amounts Six gases that are present here - Krypton, Xenon, Iodine, Ammonia. Nitrous oxide and Ozone - are not present in the list of volcanic gases so I am assuming they came from elsewhere. And I am sure many of the above gases came from additional sources as well. Hydrogen obviously did, and so did Oxygen. I think Nitrogen and Helium did, too. Since my conworld has a higher density than Earth does and hence will be more metallic, it would need to have been formed from heavier elements. Which means I might have different elements coming out of my volcanoes. I would like to find out what they will be, and how my conworld would be affected by them. This will probably pre-occupy my time in the next little while and I may post a follow-up entry at a later time. Thanks for reading. Category:Blog posts